By John Kruzel and Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON, Dec 2 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on Tuesday in a case from New Jersey involving the state attorney general’s investigation into the operator of Christian faith-based “crisis pregnancy centers,” facilities that seek to steer women away from having abortions.
The justices will consider whether to revive a bid by First Choice Women’s Resource Centers to block a records request made by Democratic Attorney General Matthew Platkin as part of a probe into whether it unlawfully deceived donors and potential clients into believing the facilities offered abortions and other reproductive healthcare services.
First Choice, which has five locations in New Jersey, has appealed a lower court’s determination that the organization’s federal lawsuit challenging Platkin’s subpoena was premature in light of ongoing state court litigation over the matter.
Crisis pregnancy centers provide services to pregnant women with the goal of dissuading them from having an abortion. Such centers often do not clearly advertise their anti-abortion stance, and abortion rights advocates have called them deceptive.
First Choice is represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group that has brought other cases on behalf of anti-abortion plaintiffs. President Donald Trump’s administration is backing First Choice in the case.
The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, in 2022 overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that had legalized abortion nationwide.
Following that decision, Platkin’s office issued a consumer alert that warned the public that crisis pregnancy centers do not provide abortions and noted that such facilities “may also provide false or misleading information about abortion.”
Platkin in 2023 issued a subpoena to First Choice seeking internal records, including the names of its doctors and donors, as part of an investigation into potentially illegal practices under a state consumer-protection law and other statutes.
Days before its records were due to be handed over, First Choice sued Platkin in New Jersey federal court, arguing that the subpoena chilled its federal rights to free speech and free association under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.
Platkin sought to enforce the subpoena in state court, a move that First Choice contested. A state judge in 2024 declined to quash the subpoena for the time being, ordering the parties to negotiate a narrower subpoena. The judge said that the constitutional issues could be litigated going forward.
In the federal case, U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp dismissed First Choice’s complaint, finding that its federal claims were premature because it could continue to make its constitutional claims in the state court and did not face any immediate threat of being held in contempt.
The Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 ruling in 2024 upheld Shipp’s ruling, prompting First Choice to appeal to the Supreme Court.
First Choice has argued that federal civil rights law is intended to guarantee parties a federal forum to assert their constitutional rights. It said that forcing it to litigate in state court would effectively deny it that forum because the constitutional claims would be decided before a federal court could ever hear them.
Platkin has argued that First Choice has not demonstrated that his subpoena – which can be enforced only by order of a state court, where litigation is ongoing – has chilled the organization’s First Amendment rights.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
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